The California Supreme
Court yesterday ruled that a suit over a law firm’s advertisement telling
newspaper readers they might have a case if their deck was built with a certain
manufacturer’s screws could be dismissed as a strategic lawsuit against public
participation.

Affirming a decision by
the Sixth District Court of Appeal, the justices unanimously ruled that the
manufacturer’s defamation suit did not implicate commercial speech that is
exempt from dismissal under the anti-SLAPP suit.

Simpson Strong-Tie,
which manufactured galvanized screws used in deck construction, sued Los Gatos
attorney Pierce Gore after he published advertisements advising owners of decks
built with Simpson’s screws that “you may have certain legal rights and be
entitled to monetary compensation, and repair or replacement” and inviting them
to contact his firm “if you would like an attorney to investigate whether you
have a potential claim.”

Santa Clara Superior
Court Judge John Herlihy, however, granted Gore’s motion to strike the
complaint under the Code of Civil Procedure Sec. 425.16.

On appeal, Simpson
argued that the suit was exempt from the law by Sec. 425.17(c), which exempts
causes of action arising from a firm’s representations of fact about its
business operations, goods or services.

The latter provides that
the anti-SLAPP statute “does not apply to any cause of action brought against a
person primarily engaged in the business of selling or leasing goods or
services, including, but not limited to, insurance, securities, or financial
instruments, arising from any statement or conduct by that person….”

The statement or conduct
must consist of “representations of fact about that person’s or a business
competitor’s business operations, goods, or services, that is made for the
purpose of obtaining approval for, promoting, or securing sales or leases of,
or commercial transactions in, the person’s goods or services, or the statement
or conduct was made in the course of delivering the person’s goods or
services…[or] [t]he intended audience is an actual or potential buyer or
customer, or a person likely to repeat the statement to, or otherwise
influence, an actual or prospective buyer or customer.”

Reasoning that Simpson,
as the plaintiff, bore the burden to show that its cause of action arose from
Gore’s representations of fact about his business operations, goods or
services, and reasoning that Simpson failed to meet that burden, Baxter
concluded that dismissal was appropriate.